A French paratrooper was killed in the mountains of northern Mali, it was confirmed yesterday, as France’s Chadian allies claimed to have killed a second terrorist mastermind.

Corporal Cédric Charenton, 26, was the third French serviceman to die in the campaign against Islamist rebels in what Jean-Yves Le Drian, the Defence Minister, described as some of the fiercest fighting of the seven-week war.

His death came amid unconfirmed reports that Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the leader of an al-Qaeda splinter group behind an attack on an Algerian gas plant last month, was killed by Chadian soldiers, who have been fighting alongside French